Encore
by Jordy Trent
Summary: It began in the waning years of the third era, when, in a boarding house within a great stone wheel of a city, you lay down to sleep with blood still on your hands. And when you woke, you were not alone...
1. Awake

**~ Encore ~**

* * *

_Awake_

It began in the waning years of the third era, when, in a boarding house within a great stone wheel of a city, you lay down to sleep with blood still on your hands. And when you woke, you were not alone.

"You sleep rather soundly, for a murderer."

The words are more approving than accusatory, delivered in a resonant voice with the slightest hint of an accent not of Cyrodiil. And the speaker, dressed entirely in black, has not come to you by chance. His purpose dawns on you only by degrees, the compelling quality of his voice and eyes making his proposal seem at first reasonable and then _enticing._

He speaks of blood and death, but he also speaks of _love_ and of _family, _something you have never known.

So when he offers a matte black blade, refusal seems all but impossible. You reach out, unthinkingly, to take it; his fingertips brush yours -

-and the jolting of the carriage awakens you to the bitter chill of another era, another part of the world.

"Hey, you. You're finally awake."

They had taken you almost the moment you crossed the border, your path suddenly blocked by grim-faced Legionnaires. Your Imperial captors haven't told you where you're headed, but given the kind of men who are sharing the cart with you, it's not hard to guess.

_A Nord's last thoughts should be of home_, the blond one says. It's been a long time since you had anywhere to call home, but if you think back far enough, it's the black-and-white timbers of Cheydinhal that form in your mind's eye - and the crumbling fort rising from the hillside above it.

You're not likely to see them again.

Standing motionless, hands bound before you, you watch with practised indifference as the first one's head tumbles from his shoulders. And when the executioner readies his axe over your own neck, it's almost a relief. At least it's a _conclusion_ \- surely preferable to the listless drag of this existence, which hasn't been the same since the day you opened the door to that lonely farmhouse in the Jeralls and saw-

And at least, unlike _his_ ending, it'll be quick and clean.

That was two hundred years ago, and even had he survived Mathieu Bellamont's treachery, he'd be long dead. Not you, though - your elven lifespan meant there were centuries ahead of you, centuries in which to mourn him. So you offer little resistance as they push you to your knees before the block. Perhaps you'll be going to join him soon, in the eternal shadow.

_Lucien_, you think longingly - your final thought, almost a prayer. And as if in answer, something as black and wicked as the Void itself comes, and you are spared. This may or may not be a good thing; but when the cries and the flames have died down, when you have washed the smoke and grit from your eyes in a bubbling ice-cold spring, you lift your head and look anew at the land laid out before you. The first thing you see clearly is a spray of snowberries, gleaming scarlet against the pristine blanket of white.

They are, you muse, the exact colour of freshly-spilt blood.

Freed, and with little interest in the rivalries of Stormcloak and Empire, you leave ruined Helgen and find your own path.

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**Hi everyone. It's great to be writing again after a long gap. If you haven't already, I strongly recommend reading my earlier story 'Lucien's Luck' - 'Encore' is a follow-up/companion piece. **

**For my Tomb Raider readers: I hope to update Reborn in Shadow soon...it hasn't been abandoned!**


	2. Into Darkness

_Into Darkness_

The old, well-thumbed guide in the Guild library described Skyrim as a land of breathtaking beauty and lethal winters.

The author, you soon discover, was right on both counts. It's still only halfway through Last Seed, but the cold - dear Sithis, the _cold_! It's like a living creature, vicious, biting - gnawing down to the very marrow of your bones, fiercer by far than anything you recall during Cyrodiil's deepest winters.

Ah, Cyrodiil, the lush playground of your youth. You were homesick for it at first, for the placid glimmer of Lake Rumare and the green rolling hills of the West Weald. But that Cyrodiil exists now only in memory. It's small surprise, then, that you should grow to love this land in all its fierce, frozen beauty - from the russet-gold leaf-drift of the Rift to the vast ice fields of the Pale and the thousandfold glitter of frost over hard-packed snow; from the silvery salmon leaping in the swift current to the hawks wheeling over the great stone arch of Solitude, the morning sun glancing off the underside of their wings in flashes of green and bronze; from the desolate splendor of the open tundra to the white mists drifting over the jagged mountains.

You withdrew from the Family decades ago, lacking the will to continue in their service. Since then wars and internal strife have taken their toll, and the Brotherhood's name is seldom spoken these days. For all you know, they have faded away, just like the mages before them (Bellamont, you think bitterly, would have been delighted.) You've wandered, this past century, across Tamriel, through Argonia's fens, across the sands of Elsweyr and the great Alik'r – finding neither rest, nor any trace of your kin.

But in this cold new land there are whispers, whispers and dark rumors. Your curiosity burns in your blood, and in no time at all you find yourself in Windhelm beside a motherless young boy, listening to his fervent prayers and pitying him, because there's no-one left to answer them.

Really, it's more mercy than murder. But when Grelod crumples to the floor with your dagger in her spine, a chain of events is set in motion.

The note, the black handprint from so long ago – at first it seems like a cruel joke. But then, once again, you find yourself waking to a shadowed presence, at once strange and familiar - tasked with spilling the blood of people who may or may not be deserving. No matter. The old, black appetites are already reawakening, and that's motivation enough.

Nestled in the sombre dark green of the Falkreath pine forest, the Black Door with its carved death's-head is a twin to the one beneath Cheydinhal's derelict house. Standing before it you recall, with painful clarity, your first entrance into that Sanctuary, and the faces of the brothers and sisters who welcomed you with such love, never knowing they were destined to die by your blade.

"Silence, my brother."

Stone grinds against stone, and after your long years in exile you shiver all over at the whispered words: W_elcome home_.

Inside, half a dozen people are gathered around what _looks _like a small girl as she cheerfully recounts murder and mayhem. At the conclusion of her story she turns and smiles brightly at you, displaying unnaturally sharp teeth. And once again, you find yourself in the bosom of a family.

_Family…with bonds forged in blood and death._


	3. From Past to Present

_From Past to Present_

Astrid's no Lucien Lachance, that much is obvious. But it's not until Cicero's arrival that you realize just how little these new siblings of yours care for what they term 'the old ways'. They spill blood with the relish you remember, but no longer in the name of the Night Mother.

It seems to you like a slow unravelling that began with the disastrous events of Cheydinhal and looks set to finish here, with a single Sanctuary and a dwindling band of killers who barely even acknowledge their Unholy Matron - even when she comes among them, withered and terrible in her ancient sarcophagus. Arnbjorn's utter disinterest, Nazir's barely-concealed scorn -it's shocking, irreverent.

You raise a hand to brush at one of the stone plaques set into the aged wall; beneath the grime and dust of decades, the Tenets are worn into near-illegibility. But in your mind, you can hear him speak the words almost as clearly as if he were standing beside you once more:

_Never dishonor the Night Mother..._

It's a warning, and you shudder, sensing ill.

The Family have not forgotten _everything_, though. By night, when contracts have been completed and blades wiped clean, they gather around the fire, trading stories of their kills and yarns from the past. And one of those old tales is all too familiar.

The story of Lucien Lachance and his Silencer has become legend in the Dark Brotherhood.

A betrayal from within, leading to the infamous Purification that left only two surviving members of the Cheydinhal family. The Speaker who was branded a traitor and punished as only the Black Hand knew how. His favoured protégé, the Silencer who loved him but could not save him, the one who saw the Night Mother face to face, became Listener…and then vanished.

They recount it all - the whole catalogue of tragedies - and you close your eyes, the firelight flickering on your unmoving face. For you, the horror has lost nothing as it resonated down the years, the pain as fresh as if it had all happened yesterday.

If you had given your brethren your real name they might consider you a traitor as well, for abandoning your Family. But if they do not recognise you your Mother does, and she breaks her long silence.

Cicero is delighted; Astrid is not.

The balance of power has shifted in her Sanctuary, and from then on she looks at you differently. She had never quite trusted you the way _he _did, and now the warmth and sisterly welcome is gone altogether, to be replaced by something more appraising, tinged with a suspicion that borders on fear.

But when it comes to a head and the Sanctuary erupts into strife and violence, it`s you she sends out across the province to hunt down the jester. Speed, she tells you, is of the essence. And with this in mind she grants you a gift.

"She is...one of us," says Astrid simply. And she leaves it at that.


	4. Shadows and Echoes

_Shadows and Echoes_

Perhaps your senses have finally deserted you after too long in the bitter cold and the blinding glare of sun on snow, because you can't really be seeing what it is you think you're seeing. But there she is: ruby-eyed, ink-black and beautiful. There is no mistaking _this_ horse, impossible as her presence in the here-and-now may seem. She shakes her mane and snorts, then turns to look at you, ears cocked, the very picture of expectancy.

After staring a moment in disbelief, you run to her and fling your arms around her neck, burying your cold face in the coarse black mane just as you did so long ago. And Shadowmere gives a low whicker and pushes her head against you in her old affectionate way.

..._a token of my trust, and love_.

x x x

The snowfield stretches out to the horizon beneath star-studded indigo skies, and Shadowmere catches impatiently at her bit, just as eager as you remember. Already dusted with snow, she appears untroubled by Skyrim`s chill, her coat grown long and rough in the freezing air.

Given her head on the open tundra she runs with the fury of Sithis himself, her mane and tail streaming like black banners in the wind, glittering frost-crystal spraying from her flying hooves. By the time you pull her up on the outskirts of Dawnstar, your heart is pounding and your cheeks flushed with an exhilaration you have not felt in years. The heat rising from Shadowmere's sides is like an invisible blanket, cocooning you from the cold.

Cicero's voice rings through the halls of the abandoned sanctuary, taunting you. And now you have a decision to make.

Betraying Astrid isn't that hard, really, since she already mistrusts you. Cicero may be a madman, but he is also the Night Mother's Keeper, and the last living remnant of the Brotherhood you knew. So you spare him - and pray that you don't live to regret it.

Back in the stables outside Falkreath, while running the brush through Shadowmere's coat, you speak his name once - on impulse, and aloud for the first time in decades: "_Lucien_." And she throws her head up and whinnies excitedly, brushing you aside in her haste to reach the door. For several long moments she searches the horizon with ears flickering and nostrils dilating, before turning, disappointed, back into the stall.

So she has not forgotten him, either. And this is comforting, but at the same time it makes you miss him all the more; after all, she was _his_ horse first.

Astrid's next gift to you is a book. It is, of course, black – worn and dog-eared, the pages yellowed with age - unremarkable enough that you might have put it aside, but for her words which ignite your curiosity.

"A spell to summon a legend of the Dark Brotherhood," she tells you.

Just laying your hand on the book evokes feelings you barely comprehend. Sorrow. Remembrance. Solace. Something you can't bear to let go. So, holding it to your chest, you sleep peacefully for the first time in years. And when you dream, you dream of long ago, and the resonance of a familiar, well-loved voice.

_You sleep rather soundly...for a murderer._


	5. Out of the Cold

_Out of the Cold_

It's just starting to snow again as the black door rumbles closed behind you, the feathery flakes filling Shadowmere's hoofprints even as she makes them. Far from the Sanctuary and the curious gazes of the others, the timber thins out to form a small clearing. It is hushed, private, all outside sounds muted by the shroud of white that covers the forest floor and bows the branches of the evergreens.

When you take out the spellbook and hold it up before you, Shadowmere turns her head sharply, ears straining forward.

The elegant antique script winds across the page, words set down by an unknown hand in ages past describing an entreaty to the Dread Father himself: _void, spirit, essence, call, return_. Perhaps it's just a trick of the light, but the ink appears dark red rather than black...

Shadowmere becomes eager to the point of agitation, nudging at the book until she almost knocks it from your hands. When you scold her she swings away to paw impatiently at the ground, throwing up the powdery topsnow.

The snow falls thicker, faster. The light is fading; as you recite the incantation, it's almost dusk.

A murmur, a whisper. A violet shimmer against the snow, and Shadowmere is suddenly quiet. She stands four-square, motionless, her attention fixed on something just out of sight beyond the falling flakes.

The air grows colder still, and the flakes swirl apart, reforming around an impossibly familiar shape. Your breath catches sharply in your chest; it _can't_ be-

"My Listener…?" -a curious lilt to the voice you know so well, a voice you had never thought to hear again in this life, and the spellbook falls, forgotten, to the ground.

Lucien Lachance always came to you in secret and shadow. Now he comes to you out of the cold, returned from the blackness of the Void to greet you, once again, here in the silencing snows of Skyrim.

Blueish-white wisps of ether breathe from him; through his vaporous form you can see the blacker, starker outlines of trees and rocks. But then he reaches out a hand, and if his _appearance _is insubstantial, his touch is anything but. Your fingers brush his - tentative and trembling at first, each testing the other - then lace together tightly, as if neither of you ever means to let go again.

"My _Silencer_," he says, his voice deepening over a warm note of certainty and recognition, and something breaks loose deep inside you, like the meltwaters of spring after a long and bitter winter.

Then, your forehead pressed to his chest, his hand at the back of your head. As the hot tears pit the snow at your feet and turn to ice on your lashes, Shadowmere moves close, eyes bright, nostrils fluttering in approval. And when you finally draw apart, Lucien smiles at you as of old.

"I live...again," he says, and he speaks for the both of you.

x x x

Lucien's dark wisdom will guide you through the coming weeks. Day or night, he never strays from your side – and how strange it feels to be the recipient of his unwavering loyalty, just as he was once was of yours.

"My blade is yours," he sometimes murmurs with a touch of slyness, bloodthirst and sensuousness intermingling in the rich dark timbre of his voice.

So you take up your contracts with renewed eagerness. When you ride out with Shadowmere supple beneath you, her ebony crest curving up to her keenly pricked ears, Lucien walks close at your side, often with one ethereal hand on the mare's neck, or shoulder. At times like this, the intervening centuries fall away and you could almost imagine yourself back in the heartlands of the Third Era: the assassin, his apprentice, and their faithful steed.

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**A/N: In 'Lucien's Luck' I used the Tamriel birthsigns as chapter titles. Here I'm using the names of the music from Skyrim's soundtrack. Thanks to all who have faved or followed. Reviews are hugely appreciated!**


	6. Blood and Steel

_Blood and Steel_

In Whiterun, at Gabriella's urging, an old woman with her face lined by the years and by Skyrim's harsh climate takes your hand and tells you of your future.

_Before you are family, there will be blood, such blood..._

And there is.

The sweet, lilting flutes keep playing as Vittoria Vici's noble blood reddens her bridal gown and seeps between the ancient stones of Solitude. You know better than to linger after the kill - to risk apprehension, _or_ to witness the look on her new husband's face as he cradles her.

Gaius Maro's blood spatters the road between Whiterun and Markarth as he dies alone and far from home, clutching at the arrow in his neck and gasping pitifully for his father.

You have never come across an Orc chef before, and the sheer novelty of it makes it seem almost a shame to take a blade to him. But he has been marked by Sithis and as his blood mingles with the frigid waters of Lake Yorgrim, you are sure you can feel the Dread Father's pleasure.

But all these are just details on a broader, bloodier canvas, the centrepiece being the death of an Emperor - and a return to the kind of glory the Brotherhood has not known in years.

The murder of the most powerful and well-protected man in Tamriel requires a special degree of stealth. And poison, while lacking the visceral thrill of steel severing sinew, or the satisfaction of the precisely placed arrow, has an insidious charm all its own. In the hands of the sufficiently skilled assassin, it's more than just a weapon, it's an _art_. And since it's one that you learned from a master, the deadly concoction is soon simmering to perfection, giving off a mouthwatering aroma that belies its true lethality. A single spoonful is all it takes.

Fleeing Castle Dour, you're already congratulating yourself on a job well done when you are confronted by the elder Maro with his soldiers - and worse, his revelation of betrayal and treachery.

_Betrayal. _The word is bitterly, bitingly familiar.

x x x

You've done this before, you and the horse, this desperate race through the night. The keen wind draws tears from your eyes and dimly, you are aware of Lucien alongside, urging you onward with something close to fear in his tone.

But just like the last time, even Shadowmere's celebrated speed cannot get you there in time. The tall pines of Falkreath are etched against the glow in the sky - a glow that is not the first light of dawn, but the fires that are raging through your Sanctuary.

(They're waiting for you, swords drawn and already bloodied, at the black door and Festus' corpse is pinned to the tree by a dozen arrows and you can barely think, you just know that you have to get_ inside_\- )

And then it's all a blur of harsh cries, acrid smoke, and the glint and clash of steel in firelight. Lucien wields his own blade with the skill and wickedness of old, and when it is finished the two of you stand, red-streaked, amid a sea of uniformed corpses. But the Penitus Oculatus are not the night's only casualties.

Your Mother calls to you once more in her harsh, sibilant voice, and as you go to her you pass them: Gabriella, Arnbjorn, and Veezara, the last of the Shadowscales_ \- _their eyes staring sightlessly, their life's blood sizzling and spitting in the flames.

A Sanctuary filled with fallen brothers and sisters, and the only comfort to be had is that at least it wasn't _your_ doing this time. Silently, you reach out for Lucien and his fingers close around yours in wordless reassurance. In this, the loss of a Family, you and he understand one another all too well. It feels like a re-enactment, as inevitable as if it had all been inscribed on some dark parchment long before your birth. Once again, your arrival has been the catalyst for events that will reverberate down the years, changing the Brotherhood forever.

When you emerge half-dazed from the Night Mother's coffin, she directs you to the cause of all this: Astrid, burned and blackened. Ruined and repentant.

After hearing her confession, you bring the blade down - in a final act of mercy, not vengeance. Astrid was no Lucien Lachance, but she was no Mathieu Bellamont, either.


	7. Unbroken Road

_Unbroken Road_

It's a four day journey over stone and through snow, following the White River north towards your new home in Dawnstar.

"What prey awaits?" growls Lucien, eager as always for the kill, and indeed there is no shortage of bandits and the like along the way to sate his appetite. This silver-white world is as beautiful, as dangerous, as any assassin. But he is not _any _assassin, he is Lucien Lachance, as deadly in death as he ever was in life, and between the two of you - or three of you, since Shadowmere does not stand idly by during battle - the most hardened outlaws do not last thirty seconds.

They'll be etched in your mind for as long as you live, these far northern nights, with purples and greens illumining the horizon, ice on the water and blood on the snow, your breath frosting in the cold, clear air...and Lucien, a child of two worlds, as intangible and mysterious as the rippling curtain of the aurora itself.

The vista recalls words from the past and a certain, fateful, encounter: a black-clad man and an awed girl speaking together in a circle of candlelight within a darkened tavern room.

"'Imagine a perfect, cloudless midnight, cold as winter ice and shrouded in shadow...'" you quote softly, to hear a low chuckle in response.

"Ah, yes. Our first meeting. So long ago..." says Lucien, ending his words on a sigh, and you do not miss the note of wistful near-tenderness in his voice.

"What's it like in the Void?" you ask suddenly. Against the blanketing white Lucien's spectral form is almost invisible, and you sense rather than see his answering smile.

"It is…home. The perfect place, for ones such as you and I."

"Antoinetta, Vicente, and the others…are they all there?"

"They are. And you will see them again, one day, when you serve our Dread Father as I do now."

One day. But for now...

Shadowmere snorts and rises on her hind legs as another leather-and-fur-clad barbarian rushes at you from the mouth of a nearby cave, and Lucien's sword is free of its sheath on the instant. If it takes the man more than a minute to die, it's only because his killer is in no hurry this time. But soon enough his life is spilling scarlet onto the snow, and Lucien stands back to admire his handiwork. "Another thrall for the Void," he comments in tremendous satisfaction.

He enjoys this kind of thing a little _too _much, you think, even for an assassin.

x x x

"We are bonded now, you and I..."

Alone, in the Sanctuary by the sea at Dawnstar, you turn at the sound of his voice to find him unexpectedly close.

"Joined...through the powers of the Void."

You hold his gaze. In that earlier life, his eyes were like brown gemstones; in this one, they are pools of lustrous dark silver.

Closer. Every hair on your body standing on end with the dangerous thrill of his nearness. It's madness, this, but the pull is too strong, the yearning all the more powerful for the two hundred years during which it had no outlet. But intermingled with desire is a sudden, overwhelming rekindling of the grief and guilt that have been locked in your heart since that dreadful day at Applewatch:

"Lucien, I'm so sorry I didn't get there in time-"

But as your voice breaks he hushes you with two fingers to your lips, smiling slightly.

"We need not speak of that, dearest sister. I never doubted your loyalty or your devotion, not once."

He turns his hand to caress your face with the backs of his fingers, a spare, elegant gesture.

"Then you'll stay with me this time?"

"Always," he says lowly, and taking your face in his hands, unhurriedly lowers his mouth to yours.

Fire burns, and so does ice. Roaming Skyrim, you've fought countless battles in the snow with the cold numbing your face even as spell-fire scorched you, until your overtaxed nerves could no longer distinguish between the bite of flame and that of frost.

So it is with Lucien. You can't tell if his touch is ice or fire, only that it _burns_; and it burns through you slowly, exquisitely, until every last barrier melts away, and the two of you are finally one.

Afterwards the room is silent and still, save for the beating of your heart, twinned with his – _a miracle_, you think, abstractedly, while his fingers wind in your hair.

"Are you really a ghost?" you murmur with drowsy curiosity.

"Sleep," he says softly by way of reply, and you do, soundly.


	8. Journey's End

_Journey's End_

The Sanctuary does not remain quiet for very long. Sithis has seen fit to spare at least some of your family – there is still Babette, the immortal child, and Nazir, stalker of the sands. Cicero, with his manic, merry prattle keeps constant watch over the Night Mother in her engraved coffin, her presence a sure sign that despite the losses, the Brotherhood will endure. And recruits are beginning to populate the halls again, a new face almost every day. It's starting to feel like _home_.

And besides those, two others remain, as they always have - and, you suspect, always will, your companions through life, death, and life again.

So you join them on the frozen beach at Dawnstar - Lucien, contemplative, gazing out over the waves, ice and salt crunching beneath Shadowmere's hooves as she wanders contentedly nearby, cropping at the coarse tussocks of sea-grass.

Lucien half-turns at your approach, extending a hand in invitation, and your fingers entwine gladly with his.

It's halfway through Second Seed, and back in Cyrodiil the air will be growing milder by the day and the leaves turning golden-green with the first flush of spring. In your mind's eye you see the indigo _morning glory_ bursting into bloom, twined around the carved columns of Skingrad and the Imperial City. In this part of the world the cracking sound of the great ice floes breaking up is the only indication of the turning season.

But standing beside Lucien, you inhale the frigid, briny air with satisfaction. You get used to the cold.

You move closer and rest your head on his shoulder, eyes closed, perfectly content.

"_Listener_," says Lucien huskily, savouring the word, and then: "There is no higher honor."

For once, you think, he's wrong.


End file.
